My my this is fun. Yesterday I read a fun web comic about a cool new browser idea from Google, and then went on my way wondering why half that stuff hasn’t been done yet anyway. Really, sorting URLs as you type them so that

www.google.com

appears before

www.google.com?s=chicken%20vindaloo&sessionid=0234848384434535,493545,43,,,534…

isn’t a world-breaking idea, surely? Supposedly Opera does it, along with several other ideas Chrome has implemented, but it’s still a bit weird that neither Firefox nor Internet Explorer have “borrowed” the ideas too.

Anyway, it turns out you can now actually download a beta version of the browser. And it seems a fairly stable beta too, this is no Mozilla 0.001a that they’ve shovelled out quickly to get their foot in the door. Google appear to have been sitting quietly with this making it work well enough to release. Google do that, more people should too - release stuff when it works.

Chrome renders pages quickly too

The stereo in my car has no external input, making it difficult to listen to music on my Nokia N810. I have to resort to a slightly fuzzy FM transmitter that dangles around in the passenger footwell and occasionally needs retuning if I go for long drives through the country. I have a spare car stereo from a previous car, but because my car’s OEM stereo is an odd shape I’ll need a replacement fascia.

Thinking I could get a replacement I hit eBay…

That seems a sensible search term, I own a 2005 Panda and need a stereo fascia. Let’s see what comes up…

Well that’s fantastic! It found 39 items. Right, must be a bargain in here…

Wait, something is wrong…

Look at the search string, it’s been modified. And if you squint at the tiny bit of writing you see some curious search logic being applied. It turns out that if eBay can’t find results for your search query, they modify it and search for that instead, and then modify what you typed into the search box. How they modify the search is unknown. All we know is that they are now giving us results for something we didn’t ask for. I don’t want a new stereo for my car, I want a fascia for my car, but that vital, important, required keyword has been stripped off!

This is a fine example of a system second-guessing its users and getting it totally wrong. There is no way a search engine can guess what I mean, the best it can do is give me alternates that are likely, or let me set the context and narrow the searches down, which is what eBay is trying to do. Unfortunately it also then decides to totally erase my previous search leading to confusion. I bet like me you look in the search box to double-check your search criteria if the search doesn’t work.

If you do a similar search on Google and it spell checks or thinks you mean something else, a much better display is presented to the user:

As you can see, Google thinks it knows better, but rather than totally obliterating your mental map of what to expect, it notifies you of its suggestion but then gives you what you asked for. It’s up to the user to use the alternate.

And that’s the way eBay should work. Rather than second guessing me and giving me pages of cars, it should tell me the search failed and then offer a suggestion for me to click on. The clicking on part is important - it links an action to a consequence and is vital to preventing your users from becoming confused. Since don’t forget, confused users often get irritated and angry and then feel the need to tell the world about this using their blogs

Like many people, I read the Dilbert strips. They’re amusing and poke fun at the types of people I have worked for. Having been a long-term subscriber to the Daily Dilbert email, I almost missed the steaming pile of gash that is the “new” Dilbert website.

Really… why? Just… why?

Do I want to share a comic with friends? Yep. Do I want to do this with some Flash-based viewer? NO! The old method of sending URLs around is easy. Do I want to comment on comics? No, not really… look at the quality of comments on YouTube for a good reason why. Do I want to put my own text into the strips? No… and I don’t want to sit and read through other people’s idea of “funny” either.

I hope the daily emails continue to use embedded images, rather than this nasty Flash thing. Wrapping a picture inside a Flash viewer is just so illogical it sounds exactly like the kind of woolly-brained thinking that Dilbert pokes fun at.

YouTube = good use of Flash
Dilbert = bad use of Flash

One of those pretty kaleidoscopic pattern generators. Whirl the mouse around and watch the pretty patterns.

http://www.qbesq.com/

I’m doing an assignment for university that needs me to create a mind map. Since these school computers haven’t any mind mapping software installed on them I went to find a web based version. Surprisingly this isn’t something the might of Google has created yet (give them time though ).

A bit of searching came across this post on a blog dedicated to Mind Mapping software. It reviews a web application called MindMeister which is an entirely web-based mind mapping tool. It’s all DHTML and Javascript, the way Google do their apps (I assume, it’s definitely not Java or Flash) and is pretty good. There are keyboard shortcuts allowing you to pour ideas into the map without too much extra thought. It exports as RTF or GIF and has some collaboration features too.

Currently it’s an invite-only beta, but I have nine invites left, and sending an email to privatebeta @ mindmeister.com will give you one. You can also get them by subscribing to their newsletter.

I like this new “web 2.0″ thing, I use many different computers each day - as a teacher there’s at least 200 PCs that I can log into and use, and they all forget my settings at logout. Also I can’t install new applications on them. However, providing I have web access I can still get to all my mail, calendar and now do productive things too